The 21st century has produced no shortage of nerve-rattling thrillers, so picking just 6 is a tough task. Nevertheless, the titles below represent the cream of the crop, the films that turn suspense into high art, and each of them does it in a different way.
Some generate suspense through killers hiding in plain sight, others through desperate investigations, psychological manipulation, or characters whose terrible decisions keep accumulating until disaster seems inevitable. All are modern classics.
6
‘The Invisible Man’ (2020)
“Surprise.” Leigh Whannell‘s reinvention of the classic Universal monster story follows Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) after she escapes an abusive relationship with wealthy optics engineer Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Shortly afterward, Adrian apparently dies by suicide. Cecilia should finally be free… except she gradually becomes convinced that Adrian isn’t dead at all. Instead, she believes he has discovered a way to become invisible and is continuing to torment her.
On its face, the premise sounds pretty absurd, but Whannell and the cast pull it off amazingly well. For instance, the director knows how to weaponize negative space. The camera frequently frames Cecilia off-center, leaving suspiciously large portions of rooms apparently empty. Viewers begin searching backgrounds for movement. That said, most of the heavy lifting is done by Moss. She turns in an intensely physical performance, making the terror feel totally believable.
5
‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” This modern classic succeeds as both a dark, intelligent drama and a tense thriller. After a drug deal goes wrong, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) makes the extremely understandable but extremely unwise decision to take the money. From that moment onward, No Country for Old Men becomes an extended pursuit in which Moss tries to remain one step ahead of the murderous Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem).
The whole way through, the Coen brothers gave us the suspense we expect from a thriller, but none of the heroics. Music is used sparingly, violence can arrive suddenly, and no one has plot armor. While the climax famously subverts the tropes associated with this kind of story, Chigurh himself is as scary as any of the genre’s great antagonists, frequently deciding lives on a literal coin toss.
4
‘Zodiac’ (2007)
“I need to know who he is.” Some mysteries become more frightening when they’re solved. Zodiac is frightening because certainty remains perpetually out of reach. This meticulous thriller from genre maestro David Fincher chronicles the hunt for the Zodiac Killer, who terrorized Northern California during the late 1960s and early 1970s while sending cryptic letters, ciphers, and threats to newspapers. But rather than turning the investigation into a conventional detective story, Fincher focuses on the psychological damage caused by a mystery that refuses to provide a clean ending.
We see this through the impact it has on three men: cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo). Years pass. Suspects emerge and disappear. Evidence almost fits but not quite. The investigation becomes an obsession capable of swallowing careers, relationships, and enormous portions of people’s lives. A brilliantly grim portrait of obsession.
3
‘Prisoners’ (2013)
“Pray for the best, prepare for the worst.” Denis Villeneuve‘s Prisoners begins with two young girls disappearing during Thanksgiving in suburban Pennsylvania. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) quickly focuses on a suspicious RV driven by Alex Jones, but the police are forced to release Alex after finding insufficient evidence to hold him. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), the father of one missing girl, becomes convinced they’ve released the man responsible. The whole cast is strong, but Jackman gives an absolutely ferocious performance as a desperate man pushed beyond every moral boundary.
Believing Alex knows where the children are, Keller abducts him and begins conducting his own brutal interrogation. The possibility that Alex might genuinely possess crucial information makes these scenes almost unbearable, while the possibility that he doesn’t makes them even worse. Complementing this perfectly, Roger Deakins turns gray skies, dark houses, empty streets, and relentless rain into an atmosphere of suffocating unease.
2
‘Uncut Gems’ (2019)
“This is how I win.” This movie feels like an extended panic attack. Uncut Gems features a ‘top of his game’ Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a New York jeweler and compulsive gambler who acquires a rare Ethiopian black opal that he expects to sell for an enormous sum. From there, Howard begins moving money, jewelry, and collateral around with frantic confidence, becoming increasingly ensnared in a chain of debts, wagers, lies, and risky schemes.
The storytelling here is propulsive, barely giving us space to breathe. Characters talk over each other, Daniel Lopatin‘s score throbs beneath conversations, phones keep ringing, doors refuse to open when they should, and Howard’s problems proliferate, hydra-like. Sandler himself is the eye of the storm, delivering a performance so good and so well-suited to the material that it’s hard to picture anyone else in the role.
1
‘Gone Girl’ (2014)
“What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?” Fincher strikes again, taking Gillian Flynn‘s fantastic novel and turning it into a new high-water mark for thriller storytelling. The setup is iconic by now: Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returns home to discover that his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) is missing. There are signs of a struggle, suspicious financial details, and enough problems in the marriage to make Nick look increasingly terrible once the cameras arrive.
Then, around its midpoint, Gone Girl reveals that we haven’t even been watching the movie we thought we were. The whole thing is a marvel of narrative misdirection, every twist and turn perfectly orchestrated. Thematically, the film also digs much deeper than most thrillers. The ending is harrowing: two characters trapped in a twisted, mutually assured destruction pact, pretending to be a happy couple for the cameras. An instant classic.
Gone Girl
- Release Date
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October 3, 2014
- Runtime
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149 minutes